If the Capital One Cup Final had been a European match and Chelsea had been wearing, say, the red and white stripes of Atletico Madrid, we’d be hailing them as the sort of savvy team the Premier League fails to produce and Diego Simeone as the new Jose Mourinho: pragmatic, ruthless, a winner.

On the face of it, a humbling midweek for our much-vaunted Premier League. Two home matches, two defeats — and one of those for the champions. Can this really be the product that we, the television audience, are about to start paying £10million a match for? And that the whole world is supposed to be clamouring to see?

As daunting reminders go, a look at how Barcelona carved Manchester City apart wasn’t bad. It would have made Arsenal all the more grateful that tonight they play host only to their manager’s former club, Monaco, and Dimitar Berbatov rather than the torrid triumvirate of Luis Suarez, Neymar and Lionel Messi.

Laurent Blanc knows greatness when he sees it, having played behind Zinedine Zidane in the 1998 World Cup, so, when the PSG manager declares that Chelsea have “one of the greats” in Thibaut Courtois, you listen.

Most football managers could give tutorials in selective argument, but Jose Mourinho was perhaps overdoing it in Paris yesterday as he tried to stress the difficulties of combining successful Premier League and Champions League campaigns.

Who still cares about the Premier League title race? I mean: it’s so last season. Seriously, apart from Chelsea supporters relishing a check on their seven-point superiority over Manchester City, do many of us bother to look at the top of the table any more? The excitement is just below.

The arrival of Juan Cuadrado at Stamford Bridge is exciting, for only the more televisual spectacle of James Rodriguez — featuring the goal of the tournament — overshadowed the Colombian winger’s contribution to the World Cup.

A visitor from Mars would probably make Tottenham favourites to win the Capital One Cup final, after he’d been shown a recording of Spurs’ recent 5-3 win in the Premier League and informed that, when they and Chelsea visited Wembley for the corresponding event seven years ago, Spurs came out on top.